And February Was So Long
by threedays
Summary: Left on their own in winter, the brothers, aged 15 and 10, face an unknown threat that has plunged their small town into darkness.
1. Chapter 1

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

_A/N: Preseries. Dean is a newly-minted fifteen-year-old and Sam is a little more than half past ten. Neither of them is mine, although I'd adopt the poor darlings in a heartbeat. The title is from a beautiful song called "February" by Dar Williams. Yes – I know it would have made more sense to wait until February to post this fic. But I am newly-divorced and I need this song NOW._

* * *

"_Every day turned solitary._

_So we came to February."_

_-Dar Williams, "February"_

To the older boy, the month of February is nothing but a dearth of school vacations, and an unwanted opportunity to freeze off various body parts - which he would name specifically, except his little brother would parrot them to the pastor when next they see him, and ask whether saying each of them is a sin. Not as a tattletale, mind. Only worried about his big brother's soul. Still. Damn annoying, that habit the kid is developing of clearing _every _little thing with God.

To the younger boy, February is still something fun. Snow and hot cocoa – one of which is provided by the aforementioned God, and the other by the aforementioned big brother. And a dearth of school vacations – which is just how the younger boy likes it – and sometimes hills steep enough for sledding, once the day's lessons are done.

To their father, February is a quarter-year past hell. It was long about February he decided, that first year, to pack up the boys and split town and chase the creature and freaking _end this._

Ten years on, it hasn't ended.

So, ten years on, he is still loading up the car in February. But this time he's leaving his boys behind.

He doesn't say "be careful" or "stay safe," because those things aren't specific. He says, "check the salt," and "lock the door," and "don't answer the phone unless it rings once first." He says, "watch out for your brother," and this is specific because he means it literally. _Watch_ your brother. Every minute.

The older boy nods and watches the car drive away. He wishes he were riding shotgun, his kid brother in the back seat, off to kill something bad and save somebody good.

But it's February and there is a dearth of school vacations. He and Sammy are stuck here.

It's a quiet town, and not in some quaint, peaceful way. Sammy is starry-eyed with snow and the fact that Dad has rented a single-family dwelling instead of a motel room. Never mind the single-family dwelling is one of the dinged-up, dented tin cans gracing a trailer park that doesn't even have the decency to be on the outskirts of town – it is smack dab in the center. There's more metal than wood in this town anyway. Train tracks cut through every patch of trees. Roads duck under the rails, or just cut right across like there's no danger. Mean-looking dogs at the ends of their chains wear circles in the snow, and the windows that aren't boarded up are tacked over with plastic and bed sheets.

Sam talks about how he'd maybe like a dog one day.

Nothing in this town is clean. The snow itself is crusted over with grit and filth. Sam bathes every night, but goes to school the next day and comes home just as grimy as everything else. Dean is tempted not to bother, but there are still girls here. He keeps himself clean. He's glad his dad has taken the car. They'd have to wash her every day or risk damaging the paint.

They are three days into February when the pipes freeze. Then burst, and there is ice on the floor of the trailer. Dean tries to melt it with towels. He tries to keep Sam clean by melting snow over the range and making him spot-bathe. But it's cold in the kitchen. It's cold everywhere. The furnace is aging and smells like fire and you can't feel it at all unless you're sitting on a vent. Which Sam always is. He's constantly got lines pressed into his shins, where he's knelt on the metal vent cover too long. Sometimes Dean sits on the opposite vent. Usually he's too busy melting snow for bathing or cooking or flushing the toilet. Snow that reaches the top of a bucket barely fills it an inch once it's water. The job is never finished.

They are five days into February when the snow stops.

Fog comes instead. Heavy, quiet gray fog that makes everything damp, but that cannot be scooped into buckets and melted over a range. Dean isn't sure what to do. He starts sneaking him and Sam into the bathroom at the gas station, so they can get scrubbed up in the sink, and brush their teeth. He washes clothes in the sink, too, and carries them home to lay across the vents until they're mostly dry.

The phone rings once on February seventh. Then stops. Then it rings again and Dean snatches it up, feeling rushed and breathless and frozen.

"Dad?"

"Dean." The connection is terrible. Fuzzy and crackling. "Dean, I might be away a little longer than I'd planned."

No _Hello._ No _How are you?_ No _How's Sam?_ Only, _I might be away a little longer than I'd planned._ Dean feels the frozen trailer floor shift underneath him.

"This thing," Dad says. "It's hard to pin down. It got somebody else last night. I -" there's crackling on the line and Dean can't understand and when he can hear his dad again, John's saying, "- don't feel right leaving. This town's lost enough."

"We could maybe help ..." Dean tries. He looks at Sam, curled up on the vent, reading a textbook bigger than his head. "You know Sam, with the research. We could come and help."

"Nah, son, you stay there. Go to school. I don't want you boys anywhere near this thing, not till I get a better picture what I'm dealing with. Anyway …" A smile creeps into John's voice. "Sammy would go postal, we try to take him out of school before his midterms. And don't you have some sort of dance?"

Dean pictures himself in the school's gymnasium with the lights dimmed, the shining wooden floor reflecting strobes and spotlights back up into the rafters. Girls dance in long dresses and boys in polos and khakis. And there is Dean along the wall, in filthy jeans and a damp T-shirt, smudges of dirt on his face, smelling like dirty clothes and backed-up sewage. He closes his eyes against the image and has to breathe hard for a second.

"Yes, sir," he says into the phone.

Only now does his father ask, "Is everything all right there?"

He wants to say no. He wants to call his father home, and he knows if he told his dad about the plumbing, and the heat, and washing up in the gas station bathroom, his dad would come back. But his dad is a Marine. Is a Marine who now hunts the supernatural. His dad is pinning something down, saving somebody's life, saving a town. A town that's being threatened with death and heartache. Dean's only being threatened with filth and cold and public humiliation.

"Everything's fine," Dean says. "Except Sam's decided he wants a dog."

John chuckles softly, sounding, through the phone, _so _far away from Dean. "Lord help us," he laughs. "I hope you can talk him out of that one before I come home."

Sam's eyes have strayed from his textbook and he's staring out the window. Not in the direction of the dogs on their chains, but toward the gas station, where their only flush toilet and their sink baths await. He looks cold. "I'll see what I can do."

"That's my boy," John says, and then the line goes quiet, like the rest of February.

It is February eighth when the town goes dark.

* * *

_To be continued … _


	2. Chapter 2

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter Two

* * *

"_The nights were long and cold and scary._

_Can we live through February?"_

_-Dar Williams, "February"_

"Dean."

He doesn't want to wake up. Wants to keep his head under the pillow, preserve what little heat is being generated by his puffs of breath against the fabric. But –

"_Dean!_"

Groan. Dean tugs the pillow aside, peeps up at his brother's face looming in the dark. _"What, _Sam?"

He sees Sam gulp, sees him look toward the window and back again. "Something's wrong."

But Dean already knows that. It's colder than usual and his little brother is holding a candle, casting dark, moving shadows against the fake-wood-grain paneling of the trailer walls. He listens for the furnace and doesn't hear it. He doesn't hear anything, come to think of it, except Sam's quiet breaths and a far-off creaking like the wind leaning on the tree branches.

"Power's out, Sammy, that's all," Dean says, sparing half a glance to the window, proving to himself that it's still dark, and therefore not a decent hour to be up and about. "Go back to sleep." He collapses the pillow back over his face, but the fabric has already gone cold.

He hears Sam step closer. The trailer groans and crackles with his weight, but the sound is oddly muted. _"Dean!"_

"Gggguuuuh," Dean mutters, and sits up, allowing his brother to pluck the pillow off his face. "Sam. For real. Can't we just be late to first period?"

Sam climbs onto the bed next to his brother. Dean has taken advantage of his dad's absence and has been sleeping in the master bedroom, with the queen-sized bed and the private half-bath, not that the latter does much good without running water. Sam's been sleeping alone in the half-sized bedroom down the hall, tucked into a twin-sized bed with a queen-sized quilt. He's got the quilt dragging behind him now as he crawls into Dean's bed, up into his face, to insist, "Something's _wrong!_"

"Your face is wrong," Dean dredges up. He feels _exhausted._ Like he cannot possibly force himself to get out of this bed and start yet _another_ day of sneaking into a gas station bathroom and spot-scrubbing grime off his little brother's face. Or of sitting through algebra next to Denise Sadler and holding in his flirtatious nature because he knows he doesn't have the wardrobe or the hygiene right now to back it up. Or of waiting for the phone to ring, worrying whether Dad's going to make it back and whether he and Sammy will have frozen by the time he does.

"Dean -"

"God, Sammy, _what? _Is wrong?" He doesn't mean to snap, except, _God!_, it's still dark out and he's tired and it's _cold_ out from under the one thin blanket he has kept for himself.

Sam gulps again. Nods to the darkened window. "Dean ... it's ten o'clock."

The sudden dysphoria is startling. He doesn't understand for a minute. Ten o'clock at _night?_ Surely it can't – but it _can't_ be ten o'clock _last_ night. They went to bed after ten o'clock _last_ night. Have they slept an entire day through? But how? Has he missed something? Is something supernatural going on? He is out of bed in a heartbeat, moving to check the salt. Even as he does, his mind catches up, calms down. Forces himself to fact-check.

"You sure your watch ain't broken?"

"Both our watches and all three clocks say the same thing. And, Dean, the _radio._"

"It's ten o-freakin-clock? For real? How'd we sleep an entire day? You been asleep this whole time, too?"

"No – no, Dean, that's not -"

But Dean has already left him behind, is checking the salt in Sam's bedroom windowsill, is checking the door locks, is looking, for himself, at every watch and clock in the trailer. He hears the radio still prattling in Sam's bedroom, but he doesn't stop to listen. He checks the kitchen, which is ghost-quiet without the hum of the refrigerator. Windows are locked. Salted. Everything is safe and secure. Normal, other than his brother's revelation of the time. What the _hell? _They don't even have gas heat, it can't have been a gas leak knocked them out for twenty-four hours. Is it possible to get so cold you accidentally hibernate? What the _hell_ …

Then Sam catches up. Catches his arm. "Dean, _stop!_"

"Sam, _what?_"

"I'm saying it's ten o'_clock! _In the _morning!_"

Nothing in him believes Sam, except the back of his neck, which freezes up with chill bumps. He forces a derisive snort. "What are you talking about?"

"The radio says it's ten in the morning. Eastern." Trust Sam to have taken time zones into account. "All our watches say the same thing."

"Uh, Sammy, last I checked, sun comes _up _in the morning …" Dean goes to the window, peers close, but all he can see is his own reflection, flickering in candlelight. It's as if someone has thrown a blanket over the trailer. Startled by the thought, Dean plunges for the door. Careful to leave the salt line intact, he turns the dead bolt and twists the knob.

Outside, he can feel the familiar dampness of fog on his skin and the squelch of mud beneath his feet. He can hear a distant car engine, and, closer, the frantic barking of dogs. Somewhere, probably still miles away, there is the whistle of a train.

He cannot see a thing.

Sam steps out behind him, but the minute he does, the candle is snuffed out by the heavy wetness of fog. Sam makes a noise like a small, startled animal. Dean hears a beep and sees a tiny, glowing rectangle of green, which throws no light. He knows Sam's pushing the light-up button on his watch, desperate for anything but this darkness, which is _beyond_ darkness.

"Go back inside," Dean says abruptly in the direction of the tiny green rectangle. "Sam, go." He hears stumbling footsteps and adds, "Watch the salt." As if Sam can watch anything. As if either of them can see _anything. _Dean's heart is stutter-stepping in his chest, but he forces his voice to sound steady, close to normal, as he follows his brother back into the house and locks the door by feel. "How'd you light the candles?"

He hears the scratch of a lighter once, twice, and then there is light again. Each boy's involuntary sigh of relief is hidden by the other's.

With a candle between them, Dean looks at Sam and Sam looks at Dean. The candle's flame dances.

Dean takes the candle and bends with it to check the salt. Intact. Safe. From certain dangers, anyway.

"Let me see that radio," he says, grim.

They sit cross-legged on the living room floor, knee to knee. This whole month, they have neglected the couch and now they don't feel comfortable sitting there, with the window at their backs. They prefer the vent, although the metal grate is stone-cold, because it is backed by a solid wall they can lean on.

Dean twists the radio's knob to "on."

"_... you're getting a late start this morning, be sure to give yourself plenty of time to reach your destination, particularly folks in the area of Hackney or Sun Station. We're getting reports of twelve to eighteen inches of accumulation in some of the higher elevations, with the valleys reporting anywhere from six to eight inches of snow on the ground. And it's still coming down out there, folks. Doppler radar at 10:06 this morning showed no end in sight to the blizzard that continues to slam our entire listening area. Temperatures are steady in the mid-twenties and this storm isn't going anywhere yet. The time is 10:25 a.m. Stay tuned to WXKP for all your weather updates. Now let's get back to Heather, standing by in the studio ..."_

"We're in the listening area," Sam says. "How come we don't have snow?"

Dean shuts off the radio. Runs a hand across his tired eyes. "This can't be real," he mutters.

"I know," Sam tells him. "But …" and he pushes the button on his watch, the button that makes the face light up. Ten twenty-seven a.m.

"But it is," Dean finishes for him.

* * *

_To be continued … _


	3. Chapter 3

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter Three

* * *

"_And then the snow, and then the snow came,  
__we were always out shoveling  
__and we drop to sleep exhausted  
__and we wake up and it's snowing ..."  
__-Dar Williams, "February"_

Around him, he hears the sounds of preparation.

Except it _isn't_ preparation. Not really. It's just a lot of well-meaning, gung-ho rescuers with no idea what they're preparing for. People are mounting up a search party, looking for missing townsfolk whose body parts John has already seen splattered all over the forest.

But he can't tell these people that. Already they suspect him.

Instead he tries to reason with them: "It's a blizzard out there." And, "We don't know what we're dealing with." And, "For God's sake, men, at least carry a weapon that shoots something other than buckshot!"

All that earns him is a slap to the back of the head from the town sheriff, who happens to be a woman and doesn't take kindly to all this "men" crap.

When talking doesn't work, John tries to deter them through other means. Chains missing from tires. Spark plugs missing from engines.

He will give the people of Sun Station this, though, with their snowshoes and their cross-country skis: they are determined.

Now, minutes from the first wave of rescuers traipsing out into the blizzard, completely unprepared for what they might find – John doesn't know what it is, not yet, but he knows they're not prepared for it, knows _he's_ not prepared for it – he spares a minute to dial his sons.

He isn't sure why. Just talked to them yesterday and Dean's nearly grown. He can handle himself, can handle Sam.

He just needs to hear their voices. As long a the sun's been up, it's been all he can think of.

John dials the number of the cheap line he'd had connected at the crappy trailer before heading out of town. Hangs up after one ring, waits a ten-count, then dials again. He imagines Sam racing Dean to try to be the first to pick up the phone, and a smile tugs at his lips. Three rings in, his heartbeat quickens and the smile disappears. No one has answered yet. Ringing means the line's not disconnected, but no one has answered. That isn't right. Radio says schools in the entire listening area are shut down today, due to the snow.

The snow. The smile returns. Sam is still such a little kid when it comes to the snow. He pictures his eldest being dragged reluctantly out "to play" by his youngest. Pictures snow ball fights and snow forts and, if Dean has anything to say about it, shockingly anatomically correct "snow-chicks." This is not their first winter, and he knows how these things go.

He is just about to hang up and leave the boys to their fun when the line goes … gray.

It's the only way he can think to describe it. Nobody answers. Nobody picks up, or at least, nobody says hello. Against the background noise of the rescue party on his end, John presses a hand over his free ear, leans into the receiver as if this will increase his hearing. "Hello? Dean?"

There is nothing, and yet …

He feels the connection through the line. Feels _certain_ that one of his boys is on the other end. It isn't that he can't hear anything through the line, or that the line is dead. No. Goosebumps grip his neck.

"Shit," he whispers.

Because he has the distinct impression he _is_ hearing through the line, and what he's hearing on the other end is heavy, oppressive silence. A _solid_ sort of silence, immovable. Unnatural.

_Super_natural.

"Dean? Sammy?"

No one answers. But the line does not go dead.

"Listen, boys, if you're there, I'm just calling to – hello? Boys!" Because he swears for a minute he heard something. Just a flicker. Like a candle burning low. He shakes off the creepy images, forces himself to chalk this bad connection up to the weather, which is not an unreasonable assumption. "Boys, if you can hear me, check the salt, keep the door locked. I know you want to play outside in the snow, Sammy, but I'd feel better if you'd stay inside for now. I can't hear you if you're talking to me. I can't hear you. I just – boys, Dean, be aware. Just stay aware."

He waits. Listens to the gray quiet. But the search party is out the door and gone. They will be gone in a rather more permanent manner if he doesn't get the lead out and follow them.

"Be safe, boys," he says, and ends the call.

He's halfway out the door when he swivels, spins back to the phone and dials Jim Murphy. Asks the pastor to keep trying his sons' number. He reassures his friend that he has no real cause for concern. That he only has a feeling … a feeling and an unanswered phone call, and he'd just feel better if he knew someone were in contact with Dean and Sam. Jim assures him that he'll continue calling while John's in the forest.

"Stay safe, John," Jim says. But John barely hears him. He grabs his gear and follows the clueless townsfolk out into the forest, vowing to finish this as quickly as he can. He has a feeling he needs to get back as soon as possible to the little town of Dusk Valley, which, only a week ago, seemed like such a safe place to leave his boys.

* * *

The phone's ring makes them both jump a mile, and Sam makes a noise that, on any other day, Dean wouldn't hesitate to point out was a full-blown scream.

In retrospect, maybe ghost stories weren't the best idea to pass the time.

Still. Who better to tell ghost stories than the Winchesters? After all, their stories are the creepiest and have the benefit of being more or less true (with some embellishments, of course). And sitting in the dark, blinking at each other through wavering candlelight, trying not to freakin' freeze to death on this gorgeous February morning, well – it's just a whole lot less terrifying when stupid campfire traditions are brought into the mix.

Besides. Dean's still Dean. He's not going to pass up this perfectly awesome chance to one-up his little brother in the ghost story department.

Problem is, Sammy _reads_ everything that will sit still long enough, so while Dean can tell him again about the angry spirit in North Carolina – _"I know, Dean, you already told me this one"_ – or the poltergeist in Texas – "_I've heard this story like a _thousand times" – or even the really freakin' scary haunted children's home in Connecticut – "_I was there, Dean!" "Oh, yeah."_ – he's pretty much out of new material. Sammy, on the other hand, is nothing _but_ new material, having read every creepy book Bobby Singer owns and then some.

The result is that Sam is maybe – _maybe _– not the only one who screams like a girl when the phone rings.

Eyes meeting in a silent pact to never, ever admit what just happened, the boys scramble for the phone in the same breath. But the candle, burned low, barely more than a nub of wax at this point, chooses that moment to snuff out – _holy crap!_ – and the brothers are plunged into total darkness.

"Dean!" Sam says. His voice has gone several shades higher than is normal.

Dean reaches out into the darkness and finds his brother's hand, which, as usual, is damp and cold. Together they feel their way in the direction of the phone. Although it only rang once, Dean knows it will ring again in a moment, and he's _so_ relieved. Earlier, when he tried dialing out to Pastor Jim and Bobby, he only got static. He talked to his dad only yesterday; he wasn't counting on an incoming call. Just as he thinks this, the phone starts ringing again. Relief makes his movements clumsy. Clumsier still because of the darkness.

The problem with moving around the country so much is that Dean doesn't know _exactly_ where the phone is in this latest of their dwellings. Of course he knows the general area of the room it's in, and that it's sitting on a small table between the unused sofa and the front door. But he doesn't know the steps required to reach it, the _feel_ of the space he needs to cover.

In the dark beside him, he hears the scratch of the lighter over and over again. But no flame appears.

"I think it got wet," Sam says softly, and then there is a soft thump, and a squeak, and Sam's hand is wrested from his.

"Sam!" Dean demands, disoriented in the darkness with no brother to anchor to. "Sammy, dammit -"

"Here … I'm here. I just tripped over the … oh … phone." The ringing stops. "Hello?" Dean hears his little brother answer. A pause, then, "Hello? Dad? Are you there?"

"Sam, where are you? Let me talk to him."

"Dad? Can you hear me?"

"Sam!"

"Dean, I can't hear him." Sam's voice sounds devastated, positively crushed. "Dean, I think, I think he's on the line, but I can't hear him!"

"Don't hang up." Dean is feeling his way toward the sound of his brother's voice. He kicks the corner of the couch, curses. Finally manages to gather a handful of brother – sweatshirt, he thinks? – and, with the other hand, takes the phone. "Dad!"

But Sam's right. There's nothing but silence and some weird sort of rustling on the line, like a mouse is crawling around in there. Just before he's about to punch the wall in frustration, Dean hears something else:

"_...ammy?"_

"Dad!"

"That was Dad!" Sam adds unnecessarily, from where he's got his ear smashed against Dean's so he can also listen to the near-useless phone.

"Dad, the whole town's gone dark. I don't know what the hell's going on, but I got the doors and windows salted. Dad, when are you coming back?"

"Daddy!" Dean is vaguely unsettled, both by the intensity in Sam's voice and the fact that, in his fear, he has called his father a name he hasn't used since he was five or six.

The voice comes through the line: _"... door locked … stay inside ..." _and a moment later, "_... can't hear you ..."_

_We know,_ Dean thinks, panic rising, but he doesn't say it, because he can't afford to interrupt what little he can hear from his father.

All he hears now is quiet – heavy, oppressive, gray silence on the line.

Then John's voice distant, like it's EVP instead of a real phone call from his real father – _"... safe ..."_

Then the line goes dead for real. Leaving nothing, not even a dial tone, to connect them with anything outside the dark.

* * *

_To be continued ..._


	4. Chapter 4

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter Four

* * *

"_First we forgot where we planted those bulbs last year,_

_and then we forgot that we'd planted at all ..."_

_-Dar Williams, "February"_

It is Jim Murphy who dials the phone, once every fifteen minutes, and listens to the disconnect recording with a growing sense of dread.

But it is Bobby Singer, notified of the situation by Jim and questioned about possible activity in the area, who jumps in his aging truck and hits the interstate.

It will take him seventeen hours. At least that's the conventional wisdom. He knows he can shave a heck of a lot off the conventional wisdom, but that still leaves him with the better part of a day's worth of empty road before he can check in on John's children. He feels the need to crush something in his hand. Looks down and realizes he's chosen his hat for the job.

Jim's mention of Dusk Valley was the first sign of trouble.

Bobby knows Dusk Valley. Or anyway, he knows the legends. Obscure, not well-known, but not a story you'd just forget. Took him a minute to blow the dust off the foggy – bad pun intended – memories when Jim called, and a few more minutes still to locate the book, with its handwritten accounts of a whole town dropping off the map once every thirty-three years.

Dropping off the map and coming up empty.

Last time was in 1961. Time before that was 1928. Both times the town disappeared. No calls, no letters in and out. The town's radio station went quiet, back when it bothered to keep a radio station. Its citizens stopped showing up for their out-of-town jobs. Eyewitnesses in '61 report trying to drive into the area, only to find that the road never got there. Just kept looping and twisting, rising and falling through increasingly heavy fog, until the motorist finally acknowledged they'd driven three or four times over the distance it should have taken them to get there, and they couldn't see a thing in front of their car.

Sixteen days, the town went quiet. Went absent. Ceased to exist at the end of the road. And when it resurfaced from its – as the bewildered authorities reported – "weather anomaly," the whole damn place was empty. Not a soul left anywhere.

"Mass hysteria," the bumfuzzled media reported. "Citizens of the town of Dusk Valley, largely a superstitious bunch, became frightened of the distinctive weather patterns there – caused, of course, by a very scientific meeting of the river and the mountain and the valley, not to mention all those miles of steel track cutting through the town – and scattered to other local communities, mostly living with relatives and failing to report their address changes."

_Right._

What the media only hinted at was that the weather it referred to was an all-consuming fog. A fog which came despite bright sun or heavy snow in surrounding areas, despite steady temperatures and weather conditions which should have prevented fog from occurring.

Every time he thinks about an all-consuming fog swallowing up a town and spitting out the bones, picked clean of John's boys and everybody else, Bobby hits the gas harder and shaves another few precious minutes off his trip.

"Sixteen days," he tells himself. Just because the town's already gone quiet doesn't mean he won't be able to get in. He's a hunter, after all. He knows things those fool drivers back in 1961 didn't know. He will be able to get in. He will be able to find Dean and Sam in the fog, to get them out.

Three hours in, he stops for gas, calls Jim from a payphone. "Any luck?"

"It rang once," Jim said. "Then the line kind of went … gray." The pastor searches for words. "I had the distinct impression I was hearing something through the line, that I was connected to the boys. But I didn't actually _hear_ anything."

"You sure the line wasn't just dead?"

"No. It was a very peculiar experience. I wasn't exactly hearing anything, but I felt like – I felt like I _was_ hearing the sounds of Dusk Valley at this particular moment."

"Well, that … ain't comforting," Bobby groans. He's crushing his hat again, and he can feel the unfamiliar sensation of a breeze on the top of his head.

"No," Jim says. "It isn't. Bobby, should I start that way?"

"Naw, I'm closer at this point and anyway I'm faster."

"Yes, I have the slight disadvantage of still recognizing traffic laws," Jim allows dryly. He pauses. Bobby would swear he hears the man swallow. "I'm hoping for a call from John at any time."

"He calls, you get him turned around and started toward his kids. He's a hell of a lot closer'n either of us." But both men know the possibility of John's phone call is just that – a possibility. It isn't something to be counted on, not when John's out in the forest taking down some other evil.

Bobby can't help but think, some _lesser_ evil. He wishes he had some way of signaling John that the safe little town he picked for his boys is anything but. Part of him is furious – John should have checked the town out more thoroughly, he should have known it had a history – but the more rational part of him – the part getting breeze where usually there is only a hat – has to admit that the story is obscure, and few people outside of himself even know about it. Jim hadn't, and he's been dealing with this stuff a lot longer than John.

Besides. Bobby knows what John does, what he is sure John doesn't want to think about when choosing a place to leave the boys: _Every_ place has a history. The trick is knowing how to deal with it.

The thought is mildly comforting. John left the boys alone, sure, but he didn't leave them unarmed. Just like the motorists trying to drive into town in the sixties didn't know what Bobby knows, the townsfolk who have disappeared in Dusk Valley before don't know what Dean and Sam Winchester do. Dean's fifteen now and not a little kid. He's smart and strong, quick and well-trained, and he will protect himself and his brother as long as he can.

He will buy time for Bobby to find a way in. He has to believe this is true.

"Jim," Bobby says, "you keep trying that phone. You get 'em, you tell them to keep inside, keep out of that fog. Tell 'em I'm coming."

"You know I will," Jim says. "Bobby, drive safe, and ..." He trails off, which is unusual for the pastor. Bobby hears the rest of the thought loud and clear: _Find a way in. Save those boys. _

"Yep," he says, and ends the connection.

By nightfall, he has put nine hours of road in his rearview. He is hunched over the wheel, dealing with blinding snow and heavy dark. It has not been an easy drive and he doesn't know that he's managed to shave any time off his anticipated ETA, but at his last pit stop, Jim reported no further luck reaching the boys, and no word from their father. He can't stop, can't turn around, despite the deteriorating road conditions and the mangled condition of his favorite hat.

He is filled with growing dread and he's got hours yet to go.

* * *

_To be continued ... _


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N:_ _Thanks so much for all the reviews and follows! I'm thrilled you like this thing!_

* * *

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter Five

* * *

"_I threw your keys in the water._

_I looked back, they'd frozen halfway down in the ice._

_They froze up so quickly ..."_

_-Dar Williams, "February"_

Sam cried a little while ago.

But only a little, and only really quiet. He doesn't think his big brother even realized, and he's glad. Sam doesn't cry much these last few years, only the phone rang again, and for an instant he was filled with such hope that it would be his father, with a plan of action for getting the boys out of the dark and taking them someplace light and safe.

But it was only an empty line again.

So he cried, but now he's finished. Even though the radio's stopped working, and even though the green rectangle of light he can make appear on his watch is getting dimmer with every button press. He's rationed the button-presses, unable to stand the thought of having _no_ source of light under his control. Once per half-hour, he's allowed to press the button. Except he doesn't know how long a half hour is until he's _already_ pressed the button and usually what feels like half an hour only ends up being ten minutes. Or two.

"Hey, Sammy, you hanging in there?"

Dean sounds kind of normal, which Sam is grateful for, even though he's not stupid, so he knows better. If everything was normal, his brother would be teasing him for something, or talking about girls, or using rather more swear words than fit comfortably into the conversation, just to show off how many he knows.

Instead, he's asking Sam if he's hanging in there. Which he wouldn't do unless things really, really sucked.

There's only one answer to that question in the Winchester vocabulary, and Sam uses it. "Yeah, I'm fine." Then thinks to ask, "You?"

To which Dean snorts. "I'm awesome."

The boys have stayed on the couch instead of returning to the vent, wanting to stay close to the phone, which has no dial tone but occasionally makes a noise like it's ringing underwater. There's never anybody on the line. The dark in front of Sam's eyes has taken on its own life, twisting and spiraling, with little bursts of color exploding here and there. He knows it's only his eyes playing tricks on him. It's like when you press your hands against your eyelids too long, and when you let them go and open your eyes, you still can't see anything for several seconds, and there are all these loops and spirals and shapes that aren't really there.

Sam thinks maybe the fake images bombarding his straining eyes in the dark are like his memories of his mother, in a way. In the absence of something to look at, his mind has created its own version of sight. He can see her so completely in his head. She's putting him to bed in his crib. She's singing him a lullaby (which he read in a book, so he can't necessarily _hear _the tune – still, he's sure it's pretty). She's tucking the blankets around him (and he can't quite picture the blankets, but he knows they aren't scratchy like motel comforters or worn through like his favorite blanket in the trunk of the Impala – the blankets in his memory are soft, like his Dad's oldest flannel shirt, but not in a bad way).

Only, he can't _remember _any of that stuff, not _really_. He knows he's put the images together from books, and movies, and little bits of information that John and Dean – mostly Dean – have let slip. Still. Sometimes it's nice to close his eyes and look at the scene as if he's really remembering it. To feel like he owns some part of the life that his brother and father still mourn.

So, Sam knows you can close your eyes and see stuff that isn't there. But it's weird to have your eyes _open_, to blink and feel your lashes touch, then part, and nothing changes in your vision. You're still seeing a muddy brown river of nothing, swirling with eddies of _maybe-something-is-moving, maybe-I-didn't-make-that-part-up –_

He shivers. Wipes his eyes with the back of his arm.

Sniffs once.

Crap.

The jig is up.

"Sam?" Dean's voice, more solid than any half-imagined memory, grounds Sam and annoys him all at once. "Y'okay?"

"I said I'm fine, Dean!" the statement comes out more forceful than he intended, and he knows he's only digging himself in further.

"'Cause you know I got your back." What Dean means is that he's got Sam's back, and his front, and his every side, and Sam knows this. Nothing is ever going to get to him without going through his big brother first.

But Sam doesn't want anything to go through his big brother at all, whether or not it's on the way to him. This entire situation is freaking him out.

Sam can't decide whether to say "I know" or "thanks" or "don't be stupid," so he goes with, "Shut up." But it comes out affectionate, which is how he means it. He wants to say more, but he is distracted by an odd sensation creeping up his right ankle, like his foot is going to sleep. That doesn't make any sense, though. He's sitting at attention, with both feet firmly on the floor. He's way too tense to stretch out, or curl up, or sprawl the way Dean is doing. Dean's big, stinky feet have been invading Sam's half of the couch for the better part of an hour. Sam keeps shoving at them, and Dean keeps poking Sam in the ribs with his disgusting toes. Sam doesn't need light to tell him his brother's once-white socks are yellow-gray with filth and age and the inability of the elder two Winchesters to ever separate a load of laundry by color.

Sam's way too keyed up to keep his feet anywhere except on the floor, ready to run. Now the odd sensation that started on the right has worked its way to both feet, and Sam wonders if this is only in his head, like the thing with his vision. Like he hasn't moved his feet in so long, he's starting to imagine weird stuff about them.

Or maybe this is what frostbite starts like. With the temperature in the room, that certainly feels possible.

"Sam, I'm thinking it's about time we feel our way to the kitchen, figure out where we left those Doritos last night," Dean says, but Sam barely hears him. After a beat of silence, his brother prompts, "Sammy?"

"Dean, I think ..."

This is all Sam has time to say before he feels himself being pulled clean off the couch.

"Sam!"

Something's got him by the ankles and it's dragging him through the house like he doesn't weigh anything, like he's a sled and it's pulling him empty across the snow. He bumps against one of the cold metal heating vents, then the leg of a chair. Then carpet gives way to linoleum, and a muddy old braided rug, and somebody's discarded boot.

_Crap! _It's going to drag him out the door.

"Sam, answer me, man!"

Sam is trying. But the cold feeling that started at his feet has gripped his whole body now, and he can't seem to make the words come. This is worse than waking up in the dark to find the heat not working, worse even than the time he slipped and fell in the creek in January (embarrassingly enough, not on a hunt at all, but on a present-finding mission for Dean's birthday when Sam was seven – he wanted to find a really cool fossil for his really cool big brother, who'd been furious he tried to hop the stepping stones by himself). This cold is an entity unto itself, and like the darkness, it is absolute.

He hears the door swing open. Feels wooden steps, then wet mud bumping under his elbows as he forces frozen arms upward to protect his head.

The dark out here is different. Heavy and wet. But wet is good. Wet makes the fingers – if that's what they are – gripping Sam's ankles slip and slide on his skin. He begins to kick, to fight. He remembers that this is what hunters do, and he is a hunter, like his big brother. He twists. He wriggles. When something comes near his face, he bites. Then gags on the taste of mud and something that might be, oh god, oh god, he _hopes_ is not blood.

He hears crashing, swearing in the dark behind him. The door slamming open. He never even hears Dean touch the steps, only hears the dull splash of his brother landing in the mud, already at a run.

It's getting more difficult to move, but Sam hopes he's slowed his captor long enough for his brother to catch up. His legs continue to twitch with all the fight left in them, but it isn't enough. Not when Dean can't see him, is screaming, "Talk to me, Sammy! Give me a direction here!"

Realization jolts. He wraps his right hand around his left wrist. Squeezes, fumbling, for the button. Clicks on, off. On, off. A tiny, waning rectangle of green light. A signal. Somehow he manages to see the numbers, to see that exactly half an hour has passed since the last time he checked his watch. _That was a really long half hour, _he thinks stupidly.

Then Dean is on him, and Sam finds himself playing the role of _rope_ in a big-brother-verses-mysterious-evil tug of war for entirely too many minutes, before Dean finally just tackles him, rolling across Sam and smashing him face-down into the dirt.

Sam feels his ankles slip free of the thing's grip.

And for just a second, he _sees Dean,_ face flecked with mud, eyes flashing fierce, caught by a light whose source Sam can't identify.

Then all goes dark, and quiet, and Sam isn't sure whether his eyes are closed or open, but it doesn't seem to matter all that much anyway.

* * *

_To be continued … _


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: This didn't come as easy as the previous chapters. Hope it's not too diced up._

* * *

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter Six

* * *

"_... and then we forgot what plants are altogether_

_and I blamed you for my freezing and forgetting."_

_-Dar Williams, "February"_

He hears the phone ring, once, clear as a bell. And even though he's sucking in gulps of air in relief and panic and fury, even though he's gathering up an armload of soggy, silent little brother, he's not going to let that phone go unanswered. Could be Dad. Could be back-up.

Dean has no idea whether Sam is even conscious, but he slings his brother over his shoulder like a sack of rocks and makes for the trailer. He bangs his shin on the steps, swears, stumbles upward. The door is hanging open, he can hear it creaking as it moves slightly, which doesn't make sense because there isn't any breeze. The phone's ring, when it starts again, doesn't sound right. It sounds warped, garbled. But it's something and he leaps for it.

"Dad?"

There is a rustle of voice on the line. He doesn't think it's his dad. It sounds like maybe Jim, but he can't make out the words.

"Pastor Jim?"

"Dean, are … Sam … kay?"

Dean gets the gist of the question but has no clue of the answer. Sam still hasn't moved. He's _so cold._ Dean has them both back on the couch, feet pulled up, away from the floor. He's sticking to Sam like a damn barnacle, but they're just both going to have to be okay with that. Something grabs the kid this time, it's going to get two for the price of one.

Dean speaks clearly and simply, loud as he can, although his voice sounds muffled in the fog that's bled into the trailer through the open door. "Sam is hurt. We need backup."

The line goes fuzzy, crackles. Goes dizzyingly quiet for a moment. Then Dean clearly hears Jim's voice say, "- Bobby -"

Dean doesn't know what this means, but he can hope.

He repeats his message a few more times, hoping the pastor will catch enough words to make sense of it: "Sam's hurt. Send backup." By the time the line goes dead, he's already returned his attention to his brother, who, to his great relief, has started coughing against his shoulder.

"Sammy? You with me, kid?"

Sam makes a noise of affirmation, although his lack of actual speech would suggest otherwise.

"You hurt?" Dean presses.

There is a long, cold pause, during which Dean's hands explore his brother's face, head, neck, feeling for damage.

"M'fine," Sam mutters, shoving weakly at his brother's hands. "Stop pokin' me, dude, m'fine."

"You don't sound fine, you sound like after that time I let you eat twenty-three Pixy Stix and you ran in circles for an hour and then threw up all over Dad's weapons bag."

"Sh'up. Said m'fine."

"Your creative contractions aren't convincing ..."

"Dude." Sam sounds just a little more clear now. "Too early'n the mornin' for 'literation."

"I have no idea what you just said. Anyway, it's not morning, it's like seven in the evening. Aren't you the one who's got a watch?"

Sam doesn't answer. Dean jostles him a little. "Hey. Hey, hey. You with me?"

"Mm."

Dean curses the darkness with several words he already knows and at least three that he makes up on the spot. He needs to _see_ Sam, to assess him. To figure out whether that … whatever .. that grabbed him actually hurt him, or whether Sam's just stunned and cold.

"Listen, Sam," Dean says, appealing to his brother's genetics. "You're a hunter. I need you to wake all the way up and tell me everything you know about this … creature or whatever."

"'S cold," Sam says.

"I know it is, it's February. Focus, little brother."

"No, I mean _it's_ cold. The thing. That had me. Is c- cold. I'm really … cold, Dean." He rubs his face miserably against his brother's neck like he used to do when he was much younger. Dean feels cold, too, but in a different way.

"Dude," he deflects. "I'm not a tissue." Pats his brother and makes no move to stop him from burrowing. Sam _is_ cold, colder even than the frozen air around them. Dean stands, tugging Sam with him, feels for the door. He feels the need to close and lock it, even though there is no telling what might already be inside with them, and clearly, salt doesn't bother this thing. He wonders how long the thing that grabbed Sam was here before they knew. How long it had lurked, just out of arm's reach in the dark, listening to them telling ghost stories and checking the phone. How long it had crept toward them, inch by inch, biding its time as it decided which one of them to snatch, which one was small and light enough to steal away with …

Shivers work their way down Dean's neck. This situation is _so_ screwed up.

Apparently he isn't the only one who thinks so, because just as he gets his fingers around the doorknob, Dean feels Sam go tense against him.

"Dean – do you hear that? Dean?"

Dean doesn't hear anything.

Sam's breathing is coming faster, soft, cold puffs against his brother's neck. "Dean, I think it's here, I think it – I think it's here again."

Dean shushes Sam long enough to listen, _really_ listen. But all he hears is Sam's breath and the soft click as he turns the deadbolt. The squish of both their wet socks on linoleum, then silence as Dean steps his brother onto the carpet, guides him back to the couch. "I don't hear anything, Sammy. What -"

_There._

Something. Not a sound, exactly, but a … but a _sense. _He is picking up something that doesn't belong, and his body responds. Muscles go tense. Chills tease his scalp. The hairs on his arms stand up as if there's been a lightning strike.

_Something is here._

But that's not what Sam's saying, Sam's not saying _something,_ Sam's saying _It. _"It's here, Dean!" Because Sam knows it now, this thing, because it's had its hands on him, it nearly made off with him. Dean is queasy. This thing knows Sam now, too. That's how it works, these monsters in the dark. They get a grip on you, and then –

And this isn't even the first evil thing that's ever had a grip on Sam. In his head, Dean sees the way his father looks when one of them is hurt, a wince, a hard edge of anger and anxiety, but underneath, _so helpless,_ something he can't hide even though he would never want his sons to see. In this moment, Dean understands that expression. He doesn't know how to fix this. He doesn't know how to protect his brother.

Sam's breaths are starting to sound suspiciously like sobs, the breathy, gaspy kind that Dean absolutely cannot stand. Sam doesn't cry much and when he does, he does it quiet. For him to actually make a noise, he has to be either brokenhearted – and not "Sally said she won't be my Valentine" brokenhearted, but "I let Dad down and he won't speak to me" brokenhearted – or he has to be terrified – like – "One of us almost died" terrified.

Like, "one of us might _still_ die" terrified.

"Sam, shh," Dean says. "It's all right. It's all right." Which of course it most certainly absolutely is _not._

"Dean, I can see it." Sam gulps but works at steadying his voice. Dean can practically hear his little brother reining in his tears. Pride shines somewhere within him, under the layers of abject terror and all-consuming rage.

"Where, Sam?" Equal parts horrified – for he can still see nothing, and what does it mean that this thing grabbed Sam and now the kid can see it even in the dark? – and relieved – because if Sam can see it, maybe Dean can kill it. "Sammy? Where is it?"

But then Sam answers, his voice sinking in thick layers of fog, and both brothers understand at the same moment. Heavy fog wet on their skin.

"Dean, it's everywhere ..."

"_Come again?"_

"It's in the fog – the fog is – the fog is _gray_ and it's – I think it _is_ the fog -" He isn't making any sense. And he doesn't sound scared anymore, and for some reason, that scares _Dean_. And now Sam's tugging out of Dean's grip, wriggling, pushing, freeing one cold, clumsy limb at a time. Dean has to keep recapturing parts of Sam, pulling him back.

"Dude, what do you think you're doing?"

"It's light! I want to go where it's light!" Sam's attempts at escape are getting stronger and something like terror grips Dean, finds its way into his fingertips, which dig into Sam's arms.

"Sam -" Dean swallows, unable to believe he is _actually_ going to say this. "Don't go into the freakin' light, Carol Ann!"

"I want to go see the – it's so _pretty,_ Dean. It's not gray, it's _silver._" He tugs an elbow free, damp sweatshirt slipping through Dean's gripping fingers. "I want to touch it -"

"Okay, that's where we hop off the loony train!" Dean executes a few of his more complicated sparring moves, pinning Sam to the sofa. He takes a second to be proud of himself for pulling this off in the dark. Sam's little, but he's all elbows, and he's never been easy to contain. Even now, limbs are spilling loose of Dean's grip like cooked spaghetti.

"_Sam Winchester! Eyes front!" _

He feels Sam startle slightly. Although Dean still can't see a thing, he is sure his brother, who appears to have some sort of magical fog vision – and how screwed up is _that?_ – is looking at him now.

"You look at _me, _Sam," Dean commands. "You look at _me._ Don't look at this fog thing, it's messing with your head, all right? Look right at me and tell me – tell me how you clean a rifle. Start to finish." There is a beat of silence. "_Now,_ Sam! Sound off!"

"B'uh – firs' you check to make sure it's not loaded. You open the bolt and look to see if- _Dean_ -"

"Keep going, Sam!" Dean has his hands on his brother's cheeks, forcing the boy's gaze toward him. He feels certain that if it weren't pitch-freakin'-dark, their gazes would be locked. He can feel Sam's attention, on _him, _not the fog, and it feels a little warmer in the room.

"You, uh – you look to see if it's got build-up or resi – residue – _Dean!_ I can't see it anymore."

Dean keeps himself upright, although he feels like he could sag onto the couch with relief.

"Good, that's good, Sammy. You just keep talking. Keep talking while we walk out of here, okay?" The trailer has been breached. He is not going to keep Sam here, where the thing has already got to him once, where it's looming. He doesn't know what they're going to find outside, but outside at least they won't be sitting ducks. There will be more places to hide. More places to hide _Sam._

Maybe there will even be people. Or light.

As Sam starts rambling about solvent and wire brushes, Dean fumbles with the deadbolt that just a moment ago seemed like a good idea. He guides his brother through the door and down the steps, out into the fog.

* * *

Bobby's nerves are never going to be the same.

Neither will his danged hat.

Three in the damn morning and he still hasn't reached the Winchester boys. The roads are shit. Ice, covered in snow, covered in ice again. Bobby's just this side of hot-wiring a salt truck. Might not be a bad thing to have with him down in the valley, anyhow. Assuming he ever gets there.

It's been a while since he's met any other cars on the road. No headlights in the rearview and none coming toward him, either. All he sees is his own two headlights glancing up off the winter wonderland, catching new snow mid-air. It's tough to tell when everything's covered in a blanket of white – Bobby curses the snow six ways from Sunday – but he's got the uneasy feeling he's already covered this stretch of road.

There aren't any payphones down this way, and if there were, he's sure the lines would be down anyway, on account of the blizzard. His radio still works and he's glad for the occasional updates, even if they don't tell him much more'n he already knows, which is that the weather sucks and any fool who's still out in it deserves what they get.

He's slid off the damn road twice.

Cost precious minutes getting dug out, making sure he was still aimed in the right direction, and it had the added bonus of soaking him in the damn precip, which means that now he's cold and soggy and about as cheerful as a wet tomcat. The steering wheel has become the object of his ire, and he beats it up with regularity. That is, when he's not too busy mashing a permanent crease down the center of his best (read: oldest) trucker cap.

Three-fifteen. He's supposed to be there by now.

Last truck stop, half past eleven, the good pastor's report was that he'd reached Dean Winchester, briefly. The connection was terrible, but Jim was able to hear the words "Sam" and "hurt," and at least twice, he heard Dean say "backup." Jim also said he'd spent much of the evening phoning other hunters, but it seems everyone is already in the crap too deep to dig out and be of help. Shit's going down all over the map. Makes Bobby damn uneasy.

All he's seen in front of him for hours is the snow, so when he sees something else, off in the distance, he doesn't know what he's looking at for a minute.

"Is that a light?"

Headlights, in fact. But his heart sinks. They're not moving. The lights are pointing up at an angle, shining off ice-encased tree limbs. Somebody's in a ditch. Bobby doesn't see any motion and he winces. Hopes he's not going to have to stop and pull a body out of a wreck on the way back out of the valley.

Besides his own headlights and the ones up ahead, the forest is eerily still. Snow makes everything quiet, secret-like. Bobby only likes secrets if he's on the keeping end of them. This whole situation's got him wound up, on edge. All the bells and whistles going off. Maybe he's just being paranoid, but if he didn't know better, he'd swear – are those –

"Shit fire!" He knows those headlights. Those are the headlights of a '67 Chevy Impala. If Bobby could lay on the gas without sliding off the damn mountain, he would. As it is, all he can do is continue to inch toward the scene ahead of him, sick at the possibility of what he might find.

* * *

John doesn't know how long he's been out, forehead on the steering wheel, slick with blood, when something shines in his eyes, bringing him awake.

"Wha -" This is the only syllable of confusion he allows himself before forcing his mind back into focus, sore though his head may be. "Bobby?" How in the hell – "Singer, what the hell are you doing out here? Didn't think you were straying too far from the salvage yard just now." John tries to sit up, tries to hide the wince of pain, but he knows Bobby sees it.

His on-again, off-again friend, reluctant mentor, and occasional babysitter steadies him, helps him sit up. "John. You know how long we've been trying to reach you?"

"Yes," John says grimly. "When I couldn't reach my boys, I called Jim."

"And he didn't tell you I was coming out here?" There's a brief pause, and Bobby continues with a snort. "No, I don't guess you gave him that much time. Stayed on the line long enough to hear there was trouble, and aimed your non-winterized hunk of classic metal into the worst blizzard this side of the country's seen in more'n a decade."

John doesn't deny it. The mention of Jim, of the phone call, has him struggling to push open the driver's side door against a solid wall of snow. Bobby, who is reaching in through the passenger side, takes pity on his slightly-addled fellow hunter and tugs him toward the opposite side of the car. "This way, ya idjit."

John allows himself to be guided out of the car, but wrests free of Bobby's grip as soon as he's clear. He's got supplies to gather from the trunk, a long hike ahead of him. Nevermind the way the forest sways when he stands to his full height. He hears Singer snort again, feels Bobby's hand on his elbow.

"Try not to keel over."

"Got to get moving."

Bobby nods to his truck. "I got supplies, John, get your ass in the truck before you -"

"No – no, we're walking. We have to walk in."

"'Cause it's a lovely damn evening for a stroll."

"I'm serious," John says. "I've been driving down this road for hours. It never gets -" he swallows, hard. Bobby can see the mask disappear for a moment, then fall back into place, solid. "It never gets there. We're going to have to try a different tactic."

"And you think hiking in is the answer?"

"Far as I can tell, the next hill, that's where it all starts to – you know, sort of – sort of repeat. Everything gets familiar. I think the road kind of … loops … up ahead. I figure we've got to go off-road, blaze a trail as the crow flies."

"Ain't no crows flying in this weather," Bobby comments, but he helps John access the trunk before returning to his own vehicle for supplies.

Dawn finds the men still walking, Bobby occasionally, casually, steadying John, who for his part does not slow down even when the concussion threatens to knock him on his ass. He'll feel it later. There's time for that later. Right now, all he feels is the absence of his children, who were supposed to be _safe,_ dammit. Who were not supposed to be a part of something awful –

Whole damn day's been awful. John doesn't mention the hunt he just came from, and Bobby doesn't ask. The new lines around John's eyes and the blood still etched around his fingernails despite an obvious scrubbing tell the story for him. He lost three more people this morning on that hunt, three people who didn't have to die, who died because they were too damn stubborn to listen to him and stay put, stay safe.

Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Dean and Sam, after all, listened. They stayed put. They're supposed to be safe, and instead, they're lost in a ghost town that has ceased to exist at the end of this road. John chalks the nausea up to concussion, the tremors up to the cold. He does not allow himself to think of possibilities. He puts one foot in front of the other.

* * *

_To be continued ... _


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Just two or three chapters left to go here. Thanks for sticking with me!_

* * *

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter Seven

* * *

"_Even after the anger, it all turned silent."_

_-Dar Williams, "February_

The sun's only been up an hour when it starts to set.

_Wait … what?_

It takes John far too long to understand. First, he thinks his vision's screwed up, or it's something to do with his own scrambled brain, but then Bobby sees it, too – "Now what the hell is this shit?" – and John feels a stab of trepidation.

Followed swiftly by a rush of hope.

"Now we're getting to it, Bobby," he says.

Bobby cuts eyes sideways at him, and their gazes meet. With a slight nod, they pick up the pace.

For hours, through odd twilight, they soldier on, cutting snow drifts higher than their knees in places. It's tough to actually see the sun, for all the trees, but they both can tell the day's getting darker. When the trees finally lean apart long enough for the men to make out what's happening in the sky, it makes sense – the sun hasn't actually set. It's still above them. It's just wrapped in layers of thick, silver fog, so dim you can look right at it without hurting your eyes.

Soon it will be gone completely.

The men don't speak much. A soft curse from John when his head betrays him and he has to sway against a tree for a minute. A tired mutter from Bobby as he commandeers a sapling as a walking stick. They're both listening, straining their ears for anything that's not the quiet rush of falling snow and the soft creak of the wind. For anything that might signal Sam or Dean's presence.

The snow's getting shallow now. Almost totally gone.

About the time night falls completely, Bobby and John step out of the woods into the grassy edge of somebody's back yard. There's just enough light for John to make out a sagging trampoline – something Sammy wanted _so bad_ last year, after he bounced on one at a school friend's house – and a leaning swing set that clearly hasn't seen a child in years.

There are no lights on in the house.

The further the men walk into the yard, the harder it gets to see. John walks by feel, stops Bobby pulling out his flashlight with a slight shake of his head. He doesn't want to give away their position.

Three streets into town, though, it becomes necessary to break out at least the smaller flashlight. There hasn't been a light on in any of the houses. Power must be out to the whole town, but the odd thing is, it's half past ten in the morning. And completely dark. And John has yet to see any signs of life. Nothing is moving. Nobody is out.

He tries to remember that he's a Marine and a hunter and not just a frightened father. But the ground shifts under him every so often and he's not entirely convinced it has anything to do with the concussion. From the look of things so far, they've arrived in town too late.

Nobody's left.

* * *

Behind a broken lawnmower in somebody's toolshed, Sam clings to his brother and briefly considers crying again.

He is hungry. He's tired – only slept a couple hours last night – and his head hurts from squinting into the dark. Ever since the thing grabbed him, he hasn't been able to get warm, and his clothes are damp from the heavy air. He's shivering hard, like one of those kittens he found in the junkyard last spring. He hopes he doesn't end up like those kittens, dead of some stray-cat illness before their third morning.

He can still see the fog, but he hasn't told Dean that. It swirls, silver and glittering, just outside their hiding place. He doesn't think it's pretty anymore.

The boys don't talk much. Dean checks on Sam occasionally, nearly quiet as the fog itself. Sam chews on the inside of his cheek to keep from complaining. He has to remind himself: Dean knows he's hungry. Dean knows he's tired and cold and scared. If Dean could fix it, it would already be fixed, so there's no point in annoying his brother by complaining. Still. It's hard not to give voice to the feelings of fear and frustration inside him.

Sitting still for so long, fear is difficult to maintain. The new emotion swelling to take front and center in his brain is _boredom._

Before the little light on his watch died completely, it confirmed seven a.m., and that's been _hours._ Since sometime yesterday evening, the boys have been sitting behind a lawnmower, scarcely moving. Once the panic of their escape died down, they played a whispered game of word association, but all the words seemed to lead back to something dark. They talked about food, but that was ill-advised. Dean produced two miserable MREs from the pack he snagged on the way out of the trailer – like an overnight bag, only for crazy people, Sam can't help but think. Full of military food and salt and holy water and weapons. Sometimes he likes to take a step back and look at his family from an outsider's point of view.

No – not _likes._ Sometimes he can't help it, and it's frightening to see how _different_ his family is from all the others. And, he often thinks, how different _he_ is from his family.

No wonder the kids at school don't talk to him. He isn't like _anybody._

Sam sighs, and blows upward through his hair. He can feel it falling into his eyes even though there's no vision to obstruct, save the swirling colors of fog he can just see through the crack under the door.

"Sammy," Dean says, in that low voice he's got for when they're in danger. But even in that low voice, Sam picks up strains of the same things he's dealing with: hunger, and cold, and tired, and _bored._

"Sorry," Sam says. He knows he shouldn't be sighing and making noise and possibly giving away their position. That is, if fog can hear. And why shouldn't it hear? Apparently, it can think, and attack, so hearing's not out of the question.

"No ..." Dean seems confused by Sam's random apology. "Just making sure you're still with me." He shifts uncomfortably, stretching long legs as much as possible in the short space. "You should try to get some more sleep. I'll keep watch."

"Dean, it's like ten in the morning."

"What, is the sunlight in your eyes gonna keep you awake?"

Sam turns the tables. "Did _you_ sleep yet?"

"I don't need to sleep. I'm bionic."

Sam snorts. "Uh huh."

"Anyways, if I sleep, who'll play weatherman and keep an eye on this fog?"

Sam doesn't tell him which one of them is actually _able_ to keep an eye on the fog. He doesn't want to admit to Dean that their odd enemy is still visible to him – that it _marked _him somehow when it had its hands on him. The thought terrifies him in a familiar way. For a couple of years now – ever since he read the journal – he's worried that he's long been marked by another evil, the one that started everything. And if he's _marked_ by evil, what does that make him?

"You can't keep an eye on anything right now," Sam says. "I'm serious, Dean, go to sleep for a minute, okay? _I'll_ keep watch."

"Like that's gonna happen," Dean snorts.

"You've been awake over twenty-four hours."

"I'm fine."

"_Dean._ I can keep watch. I'm not a little kid."

"Yeah, I know," Dean says, in a voice that underlines just how little a kid he still considers his brother. But he can't hide the exhaustion in his voice, either, so Sam presses on.

"Listen. This thing is going to attack at some point. I mean, we already know it's out to get us." Sam rubs at his ankles, which have never thawed.

"And that should make me want to go to sleep because …?"

"Because it's not attacking right _now,_ and when it does, you need to be rested!"

"Sam, I'm _fine!" _Dean growls.

Sam shrugs one shoulder, though his brother can't see him. "Fine. Suit yourself. Fall over unconscious in the middle of battle and let it grab me again because you were too stubborn to sleep when you had the chance."

Dean's arms reposition themselves around Sam. "Nothing's going to grab you again," he says, fiercely. Then there is quiet, while he mulls things over. "Okay. I'll take ten minutes. You wake me in ten minutes. That'll be plenty."

"Better than nothing," Sam agrees, knowing he will wait at least an hour before he wakes Dean. Unless, of course, the colorful fog swirling under the door of the shed decides to actually come inside. So far it hasn't. So far all it's done is wait.

Dean leans back against the wall, keeping his arms around Sam, fingers gripping his brother's sweatshirt. He clearly intends to wake if Sam so much as moves a muscle, which is kind of annoying for the younger brother, but, given the circumstances, not just a little bit comforting. Sam listens for Dean to fall asleep, and for a while his brother is only faking it, but then his breaths get heavy and slow and Sam knows Dean's out for the count.

Almost immediately, Sam starts to get scared.

It's creepy, being the only person awake in this situation. It's so creepy, Sam has to work at not poking his brother awake, even though he's the one who insisted Dean go to sleep. He knows Dean had no intention of actually falling asleep, and the fact that he has points to how much he needs it. And there is something valid in Sam's argument that when the fog does decide to attack again – if something tries to grab Sam by the ankles again – his brother needs to be rested enough to react quickly.

But …

Dean's breathing sounds _so _relaxed, now that he's asleep. And he's got Sam gripped so tight, even in sleep, that Sam is forced to stay still, leaning back against his brother. And Sam's so cold and his brother is so warm and all of a sudden, Sam feels really comfortable … he's _so _sleepy … maybe he'll just … only for a minute ...

* * *

Outside the shed, Dawn swirls and spins and dances with the fog. She is confident, like the fog itself, in that way that only weather can be, doing what it wants, when it wants, regardless of picnics and parades. She does more than control the fog – she _is_ the fog, can feel it as if it is her own fingertips, seeping into cracks and crevices, gaining entrance to homes all over town. She whispers sleepy words in the ears of the few children who have managed to hide, even as their parents were pulled screaming from their beds, and frozen into silence.

These are the children she wants - the strong ones, who can hide, who can escape her brother Dusk when he comes for them. She has been waiting for these special children to fall asleep.

When children fall asleep, they dream, and when children dream, the fog can get to them, can wrap itself around the pictures in their heads and make the dreams as dark as the sky above. Bad dreams are scary. And when children are scared, they want light.

When the children of Dusk Valley wake from their nightmares, they will come running. They will seek the light that hides within the fog.

They will hand themselves willingly to her.


	8. Chapter 8

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter Eight

* * *

"_They froze up so quickly, the keys and their owner."  
_-Dar Williams, "February"

_It's a normal-enough motel. One of the cheap kind you find a dime a dozen, just off the exit ramps of Interstates. This one has a distinctively southern feel to it: a handful of rusty pick-ups parked outside the rooms, filthy work boots discarded on doorsteps. A couple of the doors are open, lazily, with the sounds of TV and conversation and boisterous laughter spilling out, so it must be summer. This must be one of those motels where people stay longer than a night or two. It's just as run-down as its single-night-stay counterparts, but it feels a little more solid, a little more homey. Like the waitress at the diner across the street probably knows everybody's first names and how they take their coffee._

_A lot of the rooms, though, are closed, and locked, curtains drawn over their windows._

_Sam has a key. _

_It's attached to a ridiculous plastic tag that identifies it as belonging to the Winchester Motel, which is freaky but might just be a coincidence. There are a couple of Winchester Motels and Winchester Motor Lodges scattered here and there across the country. Sam remembers staying at the Winchester Inn and laughing with Dean about their reputations preceding them._

_But Dean isn't here._

_And the key is heavy, like iron instead of the cheap nickel-plated kind you'd get at the hardware store. It feels important. Too important to just be a coincidence. The name on the tag dangling from the key – Sam knows it's talking about him and his family._

_He's supposed to open one of the rooms._

_He starts on the ground floor, a Winchester favorite, for quick getaways. A few of the doors are open, but as he passes them, the people inside grow quiet, and although he trains his eyes straight ahead, he can feel them looking at him. Staring._

_He chances a glance into one room and recognizes the people he sees. They died on a hunt last summer. Campers in the forest, killed by a werewolf. He swallows hard and walks a little faster, bare feet slipping on worn-smooth concrete._

_The door at the end of the row is closed and locked, and there is no light on beyond the window. As he approaches, he hears somebody screaming inside, and he shivers, but forces himself to place the key in the lock anyhow. It was sunny only a moment ago, but now the clouds have rolled in, and he feels like it's going to be dark very soon._

_He twists the key, but meets resistance. The room won't open. There is still somebody screaming, but he scampers away, toward the next door. He wants to stop and save somebody, but Dean's not here to tell him what he should do, and Dad's not here to kick the door down, and he doesn't know how to save anybody with only his own two hands, empty but for this key._

_This is what helpless feels like._

_Sam tries door after door, listening first, and hearing something different in every room. Banging and crashing in one. The _worst_ kind of laughter in another. His key doesn't open any of these doors, and he doesn't dare knock. When he finds the right door, it will open. This much he knows, even while the dread in his stomach convinces him that he doesn't know very much, that he should run away and hide._

_He can't hide. This is his job. He has to be the one to open the door._

_Sam climbs to the second floor, a Winchester favorite, for limited access from the outside. Again, a few of the doors are open, and the people inside – all familiar – all _dead –_ fall silent with his passing. Outside, the darkness is almost complete, and although not an hour ago it was summer, a sluggish snow has begun to fall, flakes small, too cold to stick. His feet on the concrete are freezing and he wishes for shoes. He wishes for a lot of things._

_From behind the first locked door Sam reaches, he hears growling. The second, gunfire. He does not want to enter any of these rooms, and although it makes him feel like a coward, he is glad when the doors don't open on these sounds. He wants to be brave, to be strong, like his brother and his father. But his cold feet move slower with every step. He is scared. He is a kid. He doesn't want any of these awful doors to open._

_Finally, there is only one door left. Sam knows he should hurry, but he can't seem to make himself move any faster. In his wake, all the rooms are cold and quiet. The snow is falling thicker. There is no trace now of the sun. _

_With a shaking hand, Sam guides the heavy iron key toward the lock. He listens, but there is no sound inside the room. He twists the knob, knowing the door is going to open. It swings inward with a slow sigh, letting the snow onto the carpet. _

_Sam steps across the threshold. It's so dark inside the room, he doesn't know what to make of it. He expected to be attacked the moment the door opened, but nothing is happening. The TV is on, but it doesn't look right. It's too close to the beds, just a little out of place. He doesn't think a standard power cord should be able to reach the wall socket from there, but on the TV, a man is out in the woods, in blaze orange and camo, leaning low over a rifle. As Sam watches, the man turns and looks directly at the camera. The screen casts a dim blue light across the empty beds._

_The beds! Sam's eyes are drawn to them. They're neatly made. They have not been slept in. As he starts to shake, Sam realizes he recognizes the duffels left out on the beds. They belong to his dad and his brother. His dad and his brother were here!_

_But they're not, now. He's too late. He's moved too slowly._

_In the time it takes Sam to panic – and at this point, that isn't very long – he hears a familiar car's engine outside. The Impala! Maybe he can catch up to his family after all. Sam whirls and darts out onto the snow-covered walkway, ready to run down to the parking lot –_

– _and his eyes fall on the taillights shrinking down the road, casting red light in their wake. In their garish glow, he can see two dead bodies discarded on the snow._

_Familiar bodies._

_Sam starts to shake. Grief grips him, twists his stomach and his heart in two clenched fists. He hears a scream tear from his throat – disbelief, anger, denial. Despair. He runs toward the stairs, slipping and sliding, bare feet lacking purchase. He grabs the handrail and lets his feet skid down two or three steps at a time, only his hands and his abdominal muscles keeping him upright. _

_At the foot of the stairs, Sam flings himself toward the last place he saw his family, lying dead on the parking lot – _

_When, _BAM! _Like somebody has flipped a switch, Sam is standing in a sunny, hot parking lot – no bodies, dead or otherwise, anywhere to be seen. He spins to look back at the motel and sees that the doors have restored themselves to their original settings. Some open, some closed. People laughing and relaxing inside._

_Sam gulps and lets his gaze travel back up the stairs and down the row, to the final door, the one that should have housed his family, if he hadn't let them die. When he finds the door, it's standing open. There's a child framed in it, a little girl, maybe seven. She's got long brown hair and freckles. She doesn't look like she belongs. Despite the distance, she locks eyes with Sam and shakes her head._

_Then she slams the door and Sam wakes up._

* * *

Light.

Sam has to get out of the dark _right now. _He needs light. He needs safe. He needs warm.

He cannot leave his brother alone. This much he knows.

Dean's still asleep, arms locked around Sam like the safety bar on a carnival ride. Sam shrugs and wriggles until he's free of his brother's grip, then pokes Dean in the shoulder. Once, twice, with no reaction.

"Dean!"

He can hear an odd sound that turns out to be his own breaths, wheezing in terror, high and strange. He can feel each quick beat of his heart, can feel tremors racing through his limbs. His eyes water. He tastes the tang of fear, feels its numbing effect on his body. He is more frightened than is warranted, even by his nightmare.

He grabs two handfuls of Dean's shirt, shakes. "Dean! Wake up!"

Sam looks over his shoulder at the door. At the light beneath it. He can see it out there, the light, the safety. He can see how easy it would be to leave his brother asleep, to run into the light _right now_ with nobody trying to stop him –

But in his head he hears the whisper of the motel door in his dream, opening on an empty room. He shivers. Wipes impatiently at tears that have shaken loose with all his shivering.

"Dean … _Please _…"

Dean makes a small noise, and Sam falls on him, shaking, nudging, slapping. "Wake up, wake _up!" _He's terrified. He doesn't know if Dean's just asleep, or if something's wrong, and he is still cloaked thickly in terror from the dream. He _needs_ to be someplace light _right now,_ but he cannot leave Dean alone and unprotected.

Just when Sam's about to start crying for real, the door to the shed bangs open behind him.

"Sammy! Shit fire, we thought you was gone!"

Sam spins to face a dim and flickering flashlight, and a man in a ball cap silhouetted against the fog. Beside him looms another shadow. Tall and strong. _Dad! Bobby!_

Now Dean isn't alone!

Without sparing so much as a word for the grown-ups, Sam darts between them. Dean is safe now. Dean has been found.

At last, Sam is free to escape into the beautiful rainbows of light that are singing safety from the fog.

* * *

_To be continued ..._


	9. Chapter 9

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter Nine

* * *

"_And February was so long __that it lasted into March."  
_-Dar Williams, "February"

_Dean dreams of being almost rescued. Over and over. Him and Sam. But not from the darkness. From werewolves. From poltergeists. From the violent types who stay at cheap motels. _

_Sometimes Dad comes. Sometimes it's Bobby or Pastor Jim or another hunter. Once it's even the police._

_Doesn't matter who comes, or what they're trying to save the boys from. They never quite make it in time._

_The dreams are brief - only long enough for Dean to realize the danger he and Sam are in, to see a possible way out, and then to have his hopes dashed as something terrible happens – but they are _vivid, _more so than real life in a number of disturbing ways. In one dream, he watches his father running toward him through a haunted old mansion, only to see the man disappear through a weak spot in the floor. The shriek of splintering wood ends abruptly in a solid _thump _that makes Dean's stomach flip-flop. It's early morning and the sun shining through the windows is butter-yellow and petal-soft. Silver dust motes, stirred up by his father's demise, dance in the shafts of sunlight, are set swirling again by his brother's unruly hair as Sam runs toward the gaping hole where John last stood._

_Dean can't run. Can't move. Can't make a sound as Sam, too, disappears, and the sun sinks past the windows too fast to be natural and the mansion goes dark._

_Flash!_

_Dean jolts out of the first dream as if waking. Instead he finds himself in another. He and Sam are in the woods, trapped by some unknown threat that's closing in. Dean can hear water on rocks, can smell crushed yarrow and fresh mayapple. Wherever the monster travels, the trees around it die, their branches curling into themselves like dead grapevine. As Dean watches, Bobby Singer appears, gun in hand, relief on his face at having found the boys. At a distance of thirty feet, Dean can make out every square in Bobby's worn flannel jacket. He can hear Bobby's soft curse as the trees around him wither, winding their vines around him to draw him into the dead part of the forest, boots scraping dry leaves into powder. Dean knows Sam is next. Hears his brother cry out._

_Flash._

_A third dream. Pastor Jim is praying, an unending litany off to Dean's right. His voice is too thin, wavers slightly on the vowels. From the left, something is coming. Dean knows what it is. _Who _it is. Eyes not _exactly_ yellow, but that's the closest word he knows. A slow smile on twisted lips, hands clasped in a way that would be gentlemanly, if not for the one doing the clasping. Dean stands, squares his shoulders to face it. Curling bare toes into warm, wet grass. Hands closed around the taped-up handle of a baseball bat. Sparing a glance to the right, to Pastor Jim, where he prays over a silent and motionless Sam. Dean raises the bat, gulps, takes aim._

_Flash._

_A fourth dream. Werewolves. A fifth. A wendigo. Sixth, a human, breaking into the motel room. Each dream drawn in vivid color - terror, followed by stark relief, only to have the rug pulled out from under him again._

_In every dream, Sam dies._

_Flash!_

_Dean opens his eyes and finds he cannot see. It's dark. He doesn't know if he's asleep or awake. He and Sam are crouched, hiding behind a lawnmower that smells faintly of fuel and grass clippings. There are swirling, rainbow-colored lights in front of him, in the distance, dancing in the fog. He doesn't know what monster he might be fighting this time, but he knows it isn't good. _

_A door creaks open, and into his line of sight step two silhouettes. Is that Dad? And Bobby? Relief pummels Dean, followed closely by suspicion. This is where everything falls apart. This is where his rescuers end up meeting their makers instead of rescuing. This is where Sam – where Sam –_

_Sam wrests from his grip, his breath too quick and snagging with fear. He runs past the lawnmower, banging his elbow on it, the noise strangely muffled. He ducks the reaching hands of the familiar figures at the door, disappears into the swirling light of a solid fog._

_Dean tries to reach for Sam, tries to scream for him, but he cannot wake up. He looks to the figures at the door for help, but they only smile, too dark and too wide, before they swirl away into the colorful mist, figments of a dream from which he cannot wake … _

* * *

John sags onto the sofa, clutching his dying flashlight, head in his hands. He will allow himself a moment, just this one, to feel it all: the concussion. The frustration. The bitter disappointment and fear of finding the trailer empty of everything but a heavy fog and a phone off the hook. The boys aren't here and John feels their absence like a rock in his stomach. _Too late._ Oh, God. He's gotten here too late.

"John."

He is slow to respond, but forces his eyes up to meet Bobby's. The older man is standing nearby, holding the melted remains of a candle. "Looks like they stayed here a while, dealt with the dark," Bobby says.

"Before it ..." John begins. Then straightens abruptly, making the dark room around him spin. "No. Enough of this. Let's get back out there."

Bobby clears his throat but doesn't respond. He's got his hat crushed in his hand again, balled up like a tissue. He follows John down the front steps.

It is difficult to search with only one flashlight between them, especially when the light they do have isn't faring well. It keeps flickering off and back on, and every time it comes back on, the beam is weaker. It barely makes a dent in the fog.

The whole town feels muffled, too. There are no sounds, but even if there were, John isn't sure how well they could be heard. Even he and Bobby can barely hear each other when they speak. John can feel the fog on his skin as if it actually has _weight, _has _substance. _As if it is an actual _thing._

It has hands, this fog. Has fingers that can grip, teeth that can bite. It is _alive,_ this fog. The thought sends John walking fast enough to slip on wet grass, to stumble. He swears softly and steadies himself. He cannot afford – his _boys _cannot afford – this sentimentality, making him clumsy, muddying up the efficiency of his search. He must not be a worried father looking for his children. He must not _look._

He's got to _hunt._

John forces himself to be methodical, to cover ground in slow circles spiraling out from the trailer. It is painstaking, slow work. If this were another hunt and he had his eldest son with him, Dean would swear under his breath at the monotony. One step in front another. Eyes on the grass, looking for tracks, but all his senses trained on the darkness around him. He can _hear_ the fog, brushing against itself, whispering like dead leaves in winter. He can hear each of Bobby's footsteps, sinking into wet grass. He can hear a train every once in a while, though the whistle never seems to get any closer.

He has come three circuits out from the trailer, widening the distance with each loop, when, from somewhere off to his right, he hears the muffled bang of a door, and running feet.

"John," Bobby says.

"I hear it," John answers, and that is all he has time to say before his youngest child runs full-speed out of the darkness, wild eyes fixed on something past him, and crashes into him headlong, taking them both to the ground in a tangle of elbows.

Sam is up before John can react, but Bobby is there to steady him, gripping the boy by the shoulders. "Whoa, there, Sam! Where's the fire?" Which is a terrible thing to ask a Winchester, but Bobby doesn't mean anything by it.

Sam doesn't answer and John regains his footing, steps in front of the boy. "Sam."

His son fights him, eyes oddly unfocused. The boy is like cooked spaghetti, limbs spilling out of John's grip. He continues to recapture parts of his son – a wrist, an elbow, a shoulder – before regrouping. He has to snap his son out of this. Hands on Sam's shoulders, John bellows, "Sam, front and center!"

Sam, apparently working on sheer muscle memory, snaps to attention. Gaze follows more slowly, wanders through fog to land on John's face.

John sees the moment his son registers his presence, but the emotion that follows isn't quite what he expected.

"But you're not -" he says, and looks over his shoulder. His voice sounds wrong – too high, and too rough. His fear is as palpable as the fog.

"Sam?" John prompts.

"Then who's with Dean?" Sam asks.

* * *

_To be continued ... _


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: Sorry for the delay! I decided to distract myself from the divorce by taking on a third job. But it's a FUN job! It does cut into my writing time, though! That said, I promise promise PROMISE I will finish this story, and soon. I won't leave you hanging like I have on that other multi-chapter fic which shall remain nameless (and which I will still finish someday)._

* * *

**AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG**

Chapter 10

* * *

Dusk waits at the shed doors, not swirling and spiraling like his sister Dawn, but sinking silently, fading his surroundings until everything goes dark. He inhales light and breathes out inky blackness. His quiet breath snuffs out candles, tangles power lines, soaks into flashlight batteries and renders them useless.

He loves his work.

Too, he loves his sister Dawn – the light to his dark, cloaked always in her shroud of mist, swirling with rainbows of color and light. Nevermind they are destined to forever be at odds, her goals and wishes the antithesis of his. He loves her like shadows love the sun, forever separate but unable to exist alone.

Dawn is subtle, soaking into children's nightmares, waking within them a fear of the dark they didn't even know they possessed. Because of Dawn, children hide from Dusk. They draw blinds, they light candles, they insist on nightlights, they beg for bedroom doors to be left cracked, for bathroom lights to be left burning. They look toward morning. Toward his Dawn.

He loves his sister. But like anyone, Dusk wants a family of his own. A son, an heir, someone to carry on his name and his work when he himself at last sees his final sunset. It won't be long now, He's aging. Getting slower, the sun casting longer shadows into the dark of his evenings. It stays light too long these days.

The friendly sibling rivalry of Dusk and Dawn goes back centuries - ever since a curse cut them loose from the bonds of mortality and assigned them their opposite goals - and they have criss-crossed the globe, but this town is special to him. It bears his name – Dusk Valley – and in some odd way, it's like coming home. If he's going to find a family, it will be here. Every time his travels bring him here, he feels as though the endless night he's wrought will finally win out over his sister's haze of morning.

And every time, she surprises him, eventually bringing the sun back up. But not before she's added another dozen or so lights to her collectionin the fog.

Of course they aren't lights at first – once, they were children. The children strong enough to escape from Dusk's dark, cold, freezing grip. _Her _children, light and beautiful, dancing around her always. His nieces and nephews, whom he will never know, for their light repels him like the sun repels a noontime shadow.

Dusk has tried, decade after decade, to find a family the way his sister has. He has captured children and parents alike, drawing them into the darkness, showing them the beauty of his nights. But each time, the light in them fades too quickly. Each star he tries to dim to his liking snuffs out completely before he can capture it.

The little stars hiding in this shed feel _different._

Dusk sinks low, sliding into the closed shed under its crooked doors. He relishes the feeling of the building's metal siding freezing solid as he trails his fingertips across it. He frosts the window glass so hard it cracks. He is excited. There is power here, so much power and potential. So much strength.

So much light to be dimmed to perfection.

Perhaps he will finally win this game tonight.

Two boys sleep in the back of the shed, twitching restlessly as they dream the dreams Dawn sends them. Working quietly, Dusk begins to sneak into their dreams. He draws the younger boy to his feet, shows him images that comfort him. Rescuers coming for him.

He is surprised when the boy ducks these images in favor of Dawn's light.

Well, fine. The older boy, then.

The older boy is still dreaming. His eyes open just the slightest bit, and Dusk lets the imaginary rescuers fade. He knows the real thing, the boy's would-be rescuers – the only two grown-ups in Dusk Valley who still have light in their eyes – are drawing near. He can smell them, can sense them. But the younger boy will distract them.

They will not reach the older boy in time.

* * *

There are two levels of terror working in Sam at this moment: blind panic of the dark, and real fear for Dean.

Fear for Dean will always win. But only just, which is how Sam knows something is wrong inside his head. He's under, like, a spell or something. This fear he's feeling is only made-up.

The realization that this smothering, dizzying, swarming fear of the dark is only make-believe makes it easier to ignore. But again, only just. Sam is able to shut the fear down for a moment, not exactly escaping it – it still grips his heart and his stomach in twin fists of ice – but closing it into a box where it can't interfere with what he needs to do.

Which, at this moment, is to run flat-out back the way he's come. Toward Dean, who, apparently, despite his best efforts, he has left all alone.

Sam runs as fast as he can manage, on wet grass in pitch-dark. One of his socks has gotten stolen by the mud and his left foot is bare. Doesn't matter, he can't get anymore cold than he already is, his whole body is cold.

His father runs on one side of him, holding his hand as if he is not ten years old. Sam slips free of the grip repeatedly, only to find his limbs recaptured. Eventually he just lets his dad hang on. John's faster at running than Sam and Sam finds himself pulled along, only half on his feet. He increases his speed, keeps up, leg muscles tight and heart pounding, breath only a memory. His eyes keep darting from the rainbow lights in the swirling fog, growing ever brighter, to the flickering low-orange beam of Bobby's nearly-dead flashlight.

"There," Sam pants, as the shed looms out of the darkness, caught in the flashlight's weak beam. Bobby moves toward the shed's closed door. John shoves Sam behind him, steps forward.

The door swings open on an empty room.

* * *

_To be continued ... _


End file.
